Neutral Review Of A Small Orange

Review of A Small Orange


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I wanted to check and experiment with a self hosted Ghost blog of mine with A Small Orange, so I signed up with them in November 2013. A Small Orange or ASO is one of the few providers that allow a Node.js on a shared hosting environment and they lived up to expectations on that front.
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Before starting an account with them I had a chat with one of their sales representatives, a habit I usually practise, and was satisfied by the rep’s genuine detailed answers to all my queries instead of the usual answers mugged up by them and the rep did not even hint at marketing his more expensive plan to me.

Being an EIG host, I was sceptical of ASO’s service but since I wanted to examine Ghost I reluctantly went ahead with them. Surprisingly my encounter with the sales rep was satisfying and he made a good first impression which unfortunately did not last too long.

Having been their client for months I found their tech support to be mediocre, nothing to write home about. Like for example there were incidences when the tech support simply disconnected my call asking them for assistance, leaving me hanging in there. Other times I have been fortunate to get through to an attentive and helpful support rep. Their server speed was average too where sometimes my site was fast and other times not so fast.

These encounters might give the impression that ASO services was known only for inconsistency but that was the exact opposite case because from the day I signed, my site’s monthly uptime record has been steady and unchanging more than 99.9% times. ASO’s consistency is reassuring and novel considering people’s not so positive opinion about all of EIG hosts.

The Final Verdict

Taking into account the features, uptime and the favourable pricing, A Small Orange is a reasonably decent host. Being suitable for projects under development or for not very serious and important sites, ASO offers great pricing with the cheapest plan being $35 per year.

However if you are building your site for a serious online business or other important matters, then this provider is not advised due to their inconsistency as far as speed and support are concerned. If your site is of importance then do not settle with such an average host when better hosting options are available.

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